50 Naples and Rome l 1 ^ 1 



and masters politically ; only one way was really possible, and that we 

 always refused to take, to restore the National party with its liberal 

 ideas, and thus earn its gratitude and confidence. Egypt might then 

 have remained, not a dependency of the British Empire, but its very 

 good friend and the faithful guardian of the route by the Suez Canal 

 to India. The mistake made on this head by Baring was among the 

 many causes that led, as I shall show, to England's being obliged to 

 take part in the quarrel between France and Germany in the great 

 war of 1914. Lord Cromer's obstinacy on this point was a misfortune. 

 Another was the unlooked-for secession which occurred that spring of 

 Lord Randolph Churchill from the counsels of the Tory party at home. 

 Churchill had, ever since 1882, been a powerful advocate with Lord 

 Salisbury of Egypt's claim to a restoration of her independence so 

 unwisely taken from her in that year, and his quarrel now with his 

 party left my advocacy of Egyptian liberty without support at the 

 Foreign Office of effective Cabinet kind. 



We left Sheykh Obeyd for Europe in April, taking Rome again on 

 our way home and Paris. 



" 2yd April 1891. — Landed at Naples this morning, having finished 

 a letter yesterday to Lord Salisbury about Egyptian affairs, and I hope 

 he may pay the attention to it it deserves. 



" Having seen our things through the custom house we drove to 

 Agnano and the Grotto del Cane. The lake which used to be the 

 beauty of the place has been dried up these twenty years by a French 

 company, which thought to find the ancient Roman town but found 

 nothing; their operations have left a desolation hideous to the eye. 

 How horrible civilized man is. All day the spectacle of these Neapoli- 

 tans in their modern slop clothes has been to me a nightmare ; all 

 nature is defiled by them. What countenances of filthy passions ! what 

 abominations to the senses ! what foul rubbish heaps ! what stenches ! 

 We looked into the Grotto del Cane where criminals they say were 

 cast in the days of Nero. It must have been a merciful death ; witness 

 the custode's little dog which has ' died daily ' there for sixteen years 

 and still wags its tail at each new performance. A nightingale was 

 singing, the only thing quite in harmony with the beauty of the sky 

 and hills. Later we saw the young Duke, the heir to the Italian throne, 

 a small timid-faced young man, very unlike the House of Savoy of 

 which he is to be the head. The prince is physically unimposing, 

 though on horseback he looks well enough. 



"At Rome, 24II1 April. — To Monsignor Stonor's, who showed me a 

 huge correspondence he has been having with O'Shea on the subject 

 of a libel committed on him by Dr. McCormack, Bishop of Galway, 

 O'Shea having appealed to the Pope. There was one specially interest- 

 ing letter he gave me to read. It related to Parnell's doings with 



